My Three Homes

I- The Napa House was at the end of Bell Lane, where the road turned into the long curving driveway. Near the road were the two brick walls with lampposts on them, and the old wagon with the mailbox on it that my aunt would sell veggies out of in the summertime. In the yard was the barn, and the cottage, and the playhouse, the tree house, the blackberry bushes, the creek, the rope swing. Up on the brick front porch where my parents were married was some white wicker furniture with watercolor cushions. Inside the double doors to the right was the library. It had a panting of George Washington praying at Valley Forge over the fireplace, and the big east-facing windows looked out over the sweeping front lawn. Across the hall was the family room, with two grand pianos and the grandfather clock. Down the hall where I lost my first tooth, past the creepy closet under the stairs, to the big kitchen/living room. There was blue couch that my family wore out and the big round table that my uncle’s family wore out, after my grandma died. Through the hardwood kitchen with the burn mark on the island, to the stairs that lead to my aunt’s room above the garage. Up the green staircase with the blue family banner at the top was the tiny bedroom my mom stayed in on the eve of her wedding. There were the bedrooms, the large master bathroom my dad helped remodel the summer that I was seven, and the tiny landing where I slept with my cousins on the last night of the last vacation before my grandfather sold the house.

II- The House on 100 East was Victorian, tall, and was painted a disgusting sea green color for too many years. The front porch was a tiny, obvious, afterthought put on by some former owner after he’d enclosed the other porch and put a fireplace in it. I wish I could remember what it looked like when we first moved in. We put in so much work to that house, only to have the government buy it and tear it out by the roots and plant a parking garage on top of it. The aged hardwood floors were scrubbed to perfection by my parents. We painted every room a different color: the office was green, the living room was beige, the kitchen was blue, and the bathroom was yellow. Upstairs was only half-finished, a remodeling job that had to be put on hold when my sister was paralyzed. All of us slept in one big bedroom back when we only had five kids in the family. The upstairs bathroom was entirely Pepto-Bismol pink, and my sister and I spent many nights talking there while one or the other of us used the toilet, too scared to go on our own. Out in the backyard was our garden and our long lawn. Every summer my grandpa would paint an American flag on the side of the garage using cans of house paint from Home Depot. We used to pull the trampoline over and jump onto it from the garage roof. The night they tore down the house, we watched from the empty parking lot of the old Ford dealership next door.

III- The house I live in now has been in my memory just as long as these other two have. When I was five, my best friend lived there and tricked me into thinking that their was an evil gopher in the backyard. When I was eight, a nice old couple lived there. They restored the carriage house (with the help of my dad) and built a little nook into it especially for my use. When I was eleven, we moved in. It’s hard to squeeze a family of ten into a four bedroom, two bath house, but we’ve managed it. The office houses our computer and the grandfather clock from the Napa House. The living room holds one of my grandfather’s old pianos, and the kitchen was remodeled by my father when I was six years old. The lady who owned the house at the time told him, “Make it good. You’re going to live here someday.” Upstairs is the family room, with its long heated window seat and green/brown carpet. The door that used to lead to the master bathroom has been turned into a wall, but the texture is different and everyone can tell it used to be a door. Every room has at one time or another been mine, except for the master bedroom of course. The laundry room downstairs was remodeled into a handicap-accessible bedroom and bath for my younger sister. The backyard has been modified to include a tree fort, a rope swing, a zip line, and a swimming pool in the summertime. The deck, built by my father when I was nine, has housed concerts and movie nights nearly every summer since we’ve owned the place, and the carriage houses them in inclement weather. In a year I will graduate and move out, but this cozy street in Provo has been and always will be home.